


Day 30: Lawyer/Hot Dog Vendor Verse: "Practical Applications of French Conjugation"

by TC (thecollective)



Series: Destiel Smut Brigade AU Challenge [23]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1960s, Anal Fingering, Cas has a hand kink, Dean in a Suit, Dean likes it when Cas speaks French, Destiel Smut Brigade, First Time Blow Jobs, Freckles, Hand & Finger Kink, Hand Jobs, Hot Dog Vendor!Castiel, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Inspired by Otis Redding, Inspired by the costuming of Mad Men, Lawyer!Dean, M/M, POV Castiel, POV First Person, Porn With Plot, Smut, castiel speaks french, mentions of John Winchester - Freeform, past Dean Winchester/OFC, some stains just won't come out of leather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 12:16:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2387945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecollective/pseuds/TC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an Impala in front of Castiel's house, and it's not his. It belongs to that lawyer, the one that tried to shut down his hot dog stand the week before. Cas had thought that their heated first encounter would be the only one, but apparently Dean Winchester knows how to use the Yellow Pages...</p><p>Basically, this is what happens when I listen to too much Otis Redding and stare at the costumes from Mad Men. Smut with plot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 30: Lawyer/Hot Dog Vendor Verse: "Practical Applications of French Conjugation"

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read part 1 of "Cigarettes and Coffee," I recommend doing so (even though this technically can be read as a standalone)  
> I do not own Supernatural, its characters, or Otis Redding. I make no profit from this (except your kudos and feedback). 
> 
> Disclaimer: May cause spontaneous combustion of panties or slapping of mothers (or so I've been told). 
> 
> Note: This is what happens when I think of a backstory for Cas.

_Je voudrais un cafe au lait avec sucre, si vous plait._

Juh voo-dray uhn kahfay oh lay ahvek sookruh, see voo play.

_Je m’apelle [state your name]._

Juh mah pell Castiel.

_Ou sont les toilets?_

Ooh sohn lay twahlay.

_Est-ce que vous aimez le choucroute?_

I don’t understand why a stranger would ask me if I like sauerkraut--of course I like sauerkraut, I sell hot dogs for a living--and the lady in the recording does not explain it to me. I should have taken my brother’s advice and sought a French tutor. Or, a better option would have been to have learned from my grandmother, who emigrated from Paris during the second World War. I was only a child, then. I hear, I read, but I cannot speak the words the way she did. Frustrated, I stop the record, and shove it back on the bookcase. It reminds me of another record on another bookcase across town. A record that hasn’t been far from my mind in the past week. A song about late nights and cigarettes that perpetuates the lingering hope that curls in my gut every time I see a man in a well-fitted suit.

It is foolish, I tell myself. Utter foolishness to imagine that it was anything but what it was. He didn’t ask my name, didn’t ask to see me again, didn’t once look me in the eye as he walked past my hot dog stand every morning. It’s a Thursday now, and that means that nine opportunities have slipped away, like rainwater through a storm drain.

On a whim, I look out the window that faces the quiet suburban street. My neighbors never walk to my end of the street, to the side most affected by the fire back in 1961. That’s what people tell me, anyway. I suspect the truth to be quite different, that they are uncomfortable being seen in the company of a “confirmed bachelor.” So when I look out the window, I expect to see no one, but there is a practically new Chevy Impala in front of the drive, and it looks like someone stopped to take a nap behind the wheel. It’s just after sunset on a Thursday evening and perhaps someone is lost; it’s not unheard of as it took me nearly six months to navigate my way from Brentwood to downtown . Then the driver exits the vehicle, and he’s wearing a grey windowpane suit, and I know it’s him. “Pourquoi cet homme?” I ask myself. Why this man? I can almost hear the words in my French grandmother’s thick accent.

_Pourquoi cet homme, mon ange?_

He’s halfway to the front door, his footsteps sluggish and unassured. There are creases in his forehead but not his slacks, and I feel the same way I did over a week ago, when I stormed into a strange man’s office with intentions of reproof, but stumbled instead into a confusing maelstrom of lingering eye contact and sexual tension.

_Pourquoi cet homme?_

The lawyer lingers in the purgatorial area of halfway on the lawn and halfway on my porch. I can tell he’s thinking of returning to his vehicle and driving away; it’s written in the fidgeting fingers of his right hand.  The windowpane suit fits him well, and I wonder if the dark grey will make his eyes an even more vibrant shade of green. He runs his fingers through his hair, messing up the carefully sideswept part. This isn’t the lawyer I see everyday heading into Winchester & Son as if he were a hunter and it were his prey. He looks distraught, and I want to open the door, to bring him inside, to tell him practiced words of “It will be alright” or “For every closed door, there must be an open window.”

Instead, I return to the bookcase and pull out a different record, one that is not belabored with useless French phrases and poor verb conjugation. It’s very like the one that he and I listened to last week at his office, but it’s a little newer, a little sadder, a little slower. I place the needle on the spinning disc, make sure the volume is as loud as it can be, and I open the window.

 

> _Sittin' in the morning sun_
> 
> _I'll be sittin' when the evening comes_
> 
> _Watching the ships roll in_
> 
> _Then I watch them roll away again, yeah_

When he hears the words, the world’s weight that’s been resting on his shoulders slides off, and when he’s free of Atlas’ burden, he walks taller, straighter as he comes to the door and knocks once, twice, three times. Each knock is more certain than the last.

It’s as if I haven’t left his office, that it’s still a week ago, but perhaps our situations now are reversed. Perhaps it’s me now that takes the step backward, that’s tempted to look away as he asks, “Are you afraid of what will happen if you don’t look away?”

I am afraid. I am afraid of what could opening the door could mean, but mostly I am afraid that it is just a door, that it means nothing. _Pourquoi cet homme, mon ange?_

_Pourquoi pas?_

His eyes are greener than I remember.

“Um, hello, Cas” he says.

So I am still “Cas” instead of “Castiel.” I choose not to read into the word choice. “Hello, Dean Winchester,” I say.

“Uh, just call me ‘Dean.’”

“Hello, Dean.”

He runs his fingers back and forth through his hair again. I want to still his fingers with my own, to take the jittery digits and press them to my fingers, silencing them with a kiss. My brother often laughs at my sentimentality. Would Dean laugh as well?

“I don’t know how I got here,” he blurts out.

I raise one eyebrow, looking pointedly in the direction of his vehicle.

“Okay, so I know _how_ I got here, but I don’t know _why_ I am here,” he explains. “I just...I found a phone book and there you were: Castiel Novak.” He moves further into my home, instilling himself  in the house’s memory. He surveys the place like it’s at auction. “This is a nice place,” he says, “I gotta say though, I was a bit surprised that a hot dog vendor could afford a place in Brentwood.”

The eyebrow remains raised. “Franks for the Memories is a viable business,” I say, “And Brentwood was quite affordable a few years ago after the fire.” He doesn’t need to know that when I bought the house, it was nearly ashes, and I spent a hot Californian summer reroofing it. He doesn’t need to know that my three-bedroom ranch-style home is the one thing in the world I am most proud of. He doesn’t need to know that when he runs his hands along the edge of the hallway bookshelf lined with Plato, Thomas Aquinas, and Sir Thomas More, he’s brushing against the linings of my soul.

He shows himself into my living room. He whistles when he sees sofa, a monstrous creation of leather and too much padding. It was a gift from my father. “Now _that_ is a place to sit,” he says. So he does, and he lets out a familiar sounding moan as his lower body settles into the cushions.

The curl of hope returns, and a new sense of _belonging_ joins it.

I offer to make coffee for him, which he gladly accepts. He still hasn’t mentioned why he’s here or anything about our encounter last week. I brew the coffee quickly; the French press never takes too long. The mug I hand to Dean is chipped, and I notice too late. He doesn’t seem to mind. His fingers graze over the mug’s scar, dipping into it, circling it.

I’ve never been jealous of an inanimate object before.

In the background, Otis Redding croons about a dock and wasting time.

“Is this a new record?” asks Dean. “I haven’t heard this one before.”

“Not new per se,” I reply, “Otis Redding recorded this before his death last winter. It was some of the last music he made.”

“That’s sad,” Dean says.

The song continues to sweep over us, melancholy notes keeping us quiet. Pensive.

 

> _Looks like nothing's gonna change_
> 
> _Everything still remains the same_
> 
> _I can't do what ten people tell me to do_
> 
> _So I guess I'll remain the same, listen_

“Do you think we’re capable of change?” Dean asks.

I don’t know what he means.

“Maybe it’s not change at all,” he says, “Maybe we just spend our lives running around, trying to be something we’re not, and then one day we figure out who we really are and so we decide to be that instead.”

“But you make the decision to change how you appear to the world,” I argue, “Does that not count?”

Dean shrugs, and the suit jacket hugs his shoulders tighter, if possible. The shrug could mean many things. It could mean that he doesn’t care about what he’s saying and he’s just making conversation. It could mean that he doesn’t have an answer to anything. It could be a physical manifestation of his reluctance to let us fall into silence. It could mean all these things or none of them, and not for the first time, I regret the uncertainty of human existence.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he says again, “But, _fuck_ , Cas, you have to know that I’m not--I’ve never--last week it was new, alright?”

My hope beats a hasty retreat and I brace for inevitable, “It’s just not natural, you know?” I’ve heard it before. Will probably hear it again. It’s not an easy world for a “confirmed bachelor.”

Dean runs a hand down his face, and I wonder if I’ll get to touch his hands again, if this is just him telling me he has a wife or fiancee, or if he’s come for one last interlude behind closed doors. He doesn’t say that though. His hand still covers his face when he says, “I haven’t been close to anyone since Lora, and I _liked_ it, God help me. I did.”

He babbles some more about Lora, an older man (his boss? his father?), and other events I do not have a reference for. He is a ship adrift at sea, and I yearn to anchor him. Perhaps if he liked that, he would like other things as well. I reach over to remove the empty mug of coffee from his hand. He stops my hand with his, and his skin is as smooth as I remember. The curl of hope returns and is joined by desire, which races hot and heavy through my pulse. “I liked it,” he repeats. “What does that mean?”

I want to say “I do not know.” He’s looking me in the eye--perhaps this is the doorway I was afraid of--and I repeat to him a phrase my grandmother often said, “Bohn kurr nuh puh mahn tier.”

_Bon couer ne peut mentir._

Dean’s laughter is sudden and forceful as a tsunami, and I know my pronunciation is off but I really don’t think it was so laughable. “Of course, _of course_.” His words are staccatoed between bouts of laughter. “Of course my hot dog vendor speaks fluent French. Because why not?”

His?

Fluent?

“What does it mean?” he asks.

“Oh, um, ‘a good heart cannot lie.’”

“So it’s like the French way of saying, ‘Follow your heart,’ or some shit?”

“Yes, that would be an approximate English equivalent, even if some of its _gravitas_ is lost in translation.”

He smiles, and says, “ _Gravitas_ \--is that more French?”

“Latin, actually.”

“Shit, Cas, how do you know so much about so much?”

So I tell him about my grandmother--a fierce woman who was under five feet that bicycled her way out of German-occupied France--and how she would bring me books in English and have me read them to her and how she pronounced my name one syllable at a time, Cass tee ell.  It was my grandmother who named “Franks for the Memories.” Dean tells me that his first girlfriend, a Mexican girl named Madahi, taught him a few phrases of Spanish, a language that he still studies no matter how many times his father tells him it is “useless.” His eyebrows press together when he mentions his father, and I ascertain that “useless” isn’t the worst thing his father has said to him.

The silence we fall into is resounding with the words we don’t know how to say. Dean’s hands, they fiddle with the hemline of his French cuffed shirt, and this time I don’t stifle the urge to reach over and take them in mine. His hands, they are not lithe and graceful like a woman’s, they are strong and ridged. The sinewy tendons visible through golden skin are roadways, and my fingers race down the metacarpals, mapping, exploring, experiencing. “Teh mahns,” I breathe. _Your hands._ I feel the shudder that extends to the tips of his phalanges, see the darkening of his forest green eyes, and he says, slowly, as if speaking for the first time, “Will you, will you speak to me in French?”

The female voice in the recording would not approve of the way I pronounce _tendres baisers_ or _quand tu me prends dans tes bras_ , but Dean mouths his approval along my collarbone in soft wet kisses, softly sucking on the tender skin just above my clavicle. It’s my turn to shudder, to be unable to hold back my want.

_Dis-moi ce que tu veux, vraiment._

He understands my meaning, if not my words, because he takes my hands and places them on his waist. His coat, which should probably be hung up in the hallway closet, is cast to the floor. It will wrinkle. He doesn’t care. I’ll offer to iron it for him in the morning. His shirt quickly follows, and before me is the expanse of flesh that I’ve spent the past nine days wanting to press beneath my own. He has freckles, more than I would have guessed, and there is one in particular on the top of his left shoulder that I claim for my own. I stake my claim with a kiss.

“Cas,” he says, “ _Cas_.” It’s a question. It’s an answer.

“It’s alright,” I say, “It’s just us here. Just us, for as long as you want it.”

He makes a claim of his own, tilting my chin up with his strong fingers and pressing his lips against mine, hard. It’s the first kiss he’s initiated, and I imagine that he kisses the same way he presents a case at court: hard-hitting and under an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. When his tongue traces the outline of my mouth, I make the same oath.

He pushes me backward onto the sofa until I’m enveloped by it. He tugs on my polo shirt as if he’s offended by it, and it joins the coat on the floor. It’s when he reaches for my belt that I stop him. He pushes my hand to the side and says, “Not a lot in my life has been good since...well in the past six months. But this? This is good. This is good for me.” So my trousers, and then his, join the growing puddle of clothes, and suddenly his hands, _mon dieu les mains_ , are everywhere. He is dying of thirst and I am water.

“Talk to me,” he says. “Tell me what to do.”

_Touche-moi, comme ça._

He places his hands on my hip bones, digging in his thumbs so hard that there will be a mark tomorrow. The thought of a physical reminder of his hands on me has me arching into him. It is skin, so much skin, that has me trembling. _Touche-moi._

“Jesus, Cas,” he says. “Jesus.”

I’m not God but I can understand the comparison.

He laughs at my ridiculous joke and wraps his hand tighter around my cock. I could come from this alone, from his hands around me. I want to pull him closer, to pull him into myself, but I don’t know what he’s ready for. If he wants that. If he’ll ever want that.

He moves down my body, until his mouth hovers over my dick. He licks his lips, and as much as I love his hands, I may love his lips more. He chews on his lower lip, the telltale sign of nervousness.

“Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with,” I tell him. “There are other things we can do.” So many other things those hands, those lips, can do.

“I want to,” he whispers. He licks a long stripe down my cock, and then, hesitantly, wraps his lips around me. He gags a little--we all do the first time--but he’s a quick learner. _Comme ça, juste comme ça._

He bobs his head up and down, mimicking my own technique as he hums softly. He doesn’t last long--no one ever tells you about how much it hurts your jaw--and then he’s face-to-face with me, kissing me, making me taste my own precum. “What else would you like to try?” I ask him.

He blushes, and the blush extends to his chest, his shoulders, to that one freckle I’ve claimed for Castiel Novak. “I don’t know,” he says. “Show me.”

I wrap my legs around him. _Donne-moi ta main_. Spit is crude, but my “confirmed bachelor” supplies are in my bedroom, too far away. I slick our fingers with my saliva, and I take one of his, and I show him how to press it inside me. He licks his lips. _Mon dieu_. He moves it slowly, moving only fractions of a centimeter until I tell him it’s okay. I won’t break. He smiles wickedly-- _qu’ai je fai_ t--and adds a second finger. I don’t have to tell him to press harder, move faster, or twist his perfect fingers. He adds a third. He is a musician, I am his instrument, and together we play a magnum opus.

_Touche-moi, mon amour, touche-moi._

With his other hand, he takes mine and laces our fingers together. I bring them to my lips to kiss them, but his fingers inside of me have me trembling too much. It’s all too much. I want to tell him I want to touch him, to make him feel what I feel, but I don’t have ability to conjugate verbs in English, French, or any other language. Instead, I reach down between us and wrap a hand around his cock. He instinctively rubs himself into my hand. “Fuck, Cas,” he moans, “Fuck.” He begins to fuck himself into my hand in sync with his fingers fucking into me. The string of curse words that come out of his mouth make me feel powerful, so I close the grip on my hand, putting more pressure on his dick. Dean growls and moves faster, and his fingers, they press a button in me that sends me on an elevator to straight to heaven. It won’t be long for either of us.

“That, just like that,” he groans. He presses down into me, and the exquisite friction is just too much. I cry out his name as I come, coating his abdomen in my ejaculate. He continues to pump his fingers into me all through my orgasm, telling me, “You’re so good, Cas. So fucking good.” He leaves his fingers in me as he strokes himself with my hand, moving faster and faster until he comes with a shout. He collapses on me--a familiar pattern from last week--and kisses me lazily while his fingers are still in me. Finally, I beg him to stop; I’m a twitching mess in my post-orgasm haze.

“Tell me in French.”

_Arrête._

He pulls his fingers out and wipes them on the back of the sofa. I wonder what my father would say if he could see what I’ve done with his housewarming present.

Dean is surprisingly cuddly now. He maneuvers us so we’re laying side by side, facing each other, his right arm draped over my hip. “A hot dog vendor,” he says. His eyes crinkle in amusement. “How did you end up there?”

“I did not much care for being a professor of philosophy,” I tell him. “People who buy hot dogs are much nicer than the assbutts you meet in academia.”

His laughter rings out and echoes through the house. I hope to hear it many times more. “How did you end up as a lawyer?” I ask him.

“Family business,” he replies stiffly. I take that to mean he doesn’t want to talk about it. “Tell me something else in French,” he says, “Something true.”

The words are soft and smooth. _On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur._

I know I pronounce them correctly.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Castiel's grandmother is based on a friend of mine, Mimi, who really did bicycle her way out of France in WWII. She's 91 now and writing her first novel. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who gave me so much love during my first foray into the Destiel Smut Brigade writing challenges. You all gave me so much love, and I hope I gave you enough smut in return. :) 
> 
> Kudos and comments are love, but as Thumper says in Bambi, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say nothing at all."
> 
> If you like, you can follow me on twitter @dearcollectress Or not. Comme tu veux.


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